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TITLES AND NAMES
TITLES AND NAMES TITLES AND NAMES AN appropriate and attractive title has no little to do with the effectiveness of a story. In recollection, story and title are so associated as scarcely to be thought of apart. This being so, a title is not to be selected lightly; we may say, indeed, that a good story can have but one effective and suitable title. No second choice would be so good, as a synonym is never so effective as the one right word in style. But as titles are of all sorts and conditions, we must review some o: them to decide upon the principles which determine an appropriate selection. There is, first of all, the title drawn from the name of the chief character: Guy Mannering, Daniel Deronda, Adam Bede, Lorna Doone, Jane Eyre, Tom Jones, and a host of novels; of short stories, Markheim, Ligeia, Colonel Starbottle, Marjory Daw, Phoebe, Marse Chan, Rip Van Winkle, and many more. Short stories do not so often take their titles from the names of characters as do long, and the reason is apparent. Whereas a novel may concern itself with the development of a personality and thus appropriately derive its title, a short story, attempting less, usually cannot with a just signification take a single name as descriptive of its theme. The name would often imply too much; the story does not attempt to develop all of a character but to set forth a situation in the life of that character. A character title is simple and unpretentious; it is also short; and these are virtues. It is not, however, highly interesting in itself alone, nor does it arouse curiosity. Once the story is read the title may seem imbued with meaning; then it has value. But unless the name is peculiar or arresting, as Oliver Twist or Martin Chuzzlewit, it does not provoke interest. In a short story, therefore, the name is more of ten qualified and a situation involving the character is suggested. Thus we have The Madness of Private Ortheris, The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney, Tod's Amendment, The Madness of Phillip, and the like. Such titles are more specific and limited than name alone. They suggest something of the nature of the story. Names of place, if the story is most concerned with setting, are often appropriate as titles. Thus of novels:Bleak House, The House of Seven Gabler, The House on the Marsh, The House with the Green Shutters, The Mill on the Floss, Middle goarch, Cranford, The Garden of Allah, A Window in Thrums—to mention but a few. Of short stories it is not easy to recall notable titles of place, but a few will suffice:The Merry Men (the reference is to the waves so named breaking on the reefs), Is the House of Suddhoo, The Fall of the House of Usher, La Grande Bretiche, The Great Stone Face, The Beach of Palest!. As in the case of titles drawn from characters, these are memorable if the place is truly conspicuous in the story. They arouse curiosity only if unusual or suggestive and seldom afford a dear clew to the story. Names of character and place may be combined in a title:Hamlet of Shshtchigry County, The Venus of Ille, A Lear of the Steppes—in all these the nature of the story is more or less dearly suggested and the title is in part literary and allusive. Others: King Solomon of Kentucky, The Sire de Malitroit's Door, Will o' the Mill, Rose of Dutcher's Cooley. In these, presumably, character and place could not easily be dissociated in the author's mind, or merely, the name of the place was thought to give the title a touch of picturesqueness. It is not a class which need detain us long. Titles such as A Lear of the Steppes are, as was suggested, rather more than compounds of name and place. They suggest through allusion some thing of the nature of the story. The best titles, that is, most suggestive and memorable, are, perhaps, those which tell something of the story. How much the title may safely tell we shall consider later. We should first discuss some of the means whereby the theme is suggested. A Lear of the Steppes is a literary title the significance of which is bound up with the associations which surround the Lear story. There are many such titles in English literature. Vanity Fairrecalls Pilgrim's Progress; Red Pottage is Biblical; The Mettle of the Pasture is from Shakespeare; Baa Baa Black Sheep and Georgie Porgie are from Mother Goose; The Lie Absolute and Rosemary for Remembrance are from Shakespeare; The Lotos-Eaters, Tennyson; Bread Upon the Waters, Such as Walk inDarkness, and Without Benefit of Clergy are among others of this large class. The merit of these is that they are suggestive; the story is enriched by the literary associations which cling to the passage in literature from which the title is drawn. The story's theme is, too, more or less clearly indicated in so far as the literary application is not far-fetched. A title which inappropriately draws upon literature for a false atmosphere is, however, insipid by reason of the pretence. Stories may, in their titles, tell much or little of the story in ways other than allusive:The Story of a Lie, The Taking of the Redoubt, In Each Other's Shoes, The Phonograph and the Graft, Peter Rugg, the Missing Man, The Attack on the Mill, The Adventures of a New Year's Eve, Christian Gellert's Last Christmas, The Unfaithful Lover, A Derelict, Youth, The End of the Tether, A Good-for-Nothing, The Man without a Country, The Man Who Was, The Man Who WouldBs King, The Purloined Letter—all these tell something of the story, some little, some much; they seek to express the theme of the story, to catch the gist of it in a phrase. There is no question that they are appropriate; but it is certain also that they are of uneven merit. The less excellent, such as The Adventuress of a New Year's Eve, apparently tell too much. The reader turns to a story if his curiosity has been piqued by the title, but is uninterested if told too much. Such a title asThe Man Who Was is, however, provocative of curiosity. Something of the story's theme is surmised, but only enough to prompt a reading that the guess may be verified. The Man without a Country, on the other hand, is explicit, but is so surprising in itself that we wish to discover the explanation, and therefore read the story. So, too, withThe Suicide Club. The title is explicit, but serves, none the leas, to arouse curiosity. We may generalize thus much: a good title, though accurate in its definition of the story's theme, is so phrased as to excite attention and curiosity. If it were no more than a label for goods, the writer only a shopman, it would be well to provide an attractive announcement for the stimulation of trade. And even though the story prove not so interesting as the name implies, the reader will forgive the deception by reason of his anticipatory thrill —though I do remember, as a boy, being much misled by a novel entitled Slings and Arrows, which, to my huge disappointment, had nothing to do with battles. Titles of name and place or those which define the story theme are not, however, all. There is at least one other class of importance, and in this are to be found some of the most effective titles in literature. They do not label the theme abstractly, but instead name some specific object around which the story centers. They are probably most effective in retrospect, for the story must be read to invest them with meaning; but they are forever memorable. The Necklace, The Scarlet Letter, The Moonstone, The Black Pearl, The Piece of String, The Monkey's Paw, The Gold Bug—the stories which these suggest come vividly to mind as one reads the list. It is hard to believe that they had not always this significance; yet though sufficiently inviting, they cannot have exerted so powerful a hold upon the imagination when the story was yet to read as now in retrospect. Durability is their great virtue. There is an excellent reason for the success of titles such as these. Literature, though it deals with ideas and emotions, is best when it is concrete rather than abstract. Maupassant's theme in The Necklace may be the irony of chance; but his philosophy is not abstractly put; it is told in terms of human experience; its substance is the concrete fact of life. The tragedy of The Necklace is summed up in the jewel itself—which was paste. Therefore the story's title is doubly effective in that it recalls something which appeals to the senses of touch and vision, and which also symbolizes the idea of the story. So, too, with The Scarlet Letter, most admirable title. The glowing symbol of Hester's sin is the best possible device wherewith to label the story. The Scarlet Letter, moreover, is highly provocative of curiosity. Concrete titles, names of objects, are, then, possessed of a double appeal. When they are both suggestive and inviting they would seem to meet all requirements of a perfect title. But we must not conclude that all good titles are of this class. Kipling'sWithout Benefit of Clergy, with its neat misuse of a phrase, is both inviting and memorable. So, too, is the title Theyof what is, perhaps, Kipling's masterpiece of suggestion. It is a puzzling, enigmatical title, one which commands a reading of the story. In retrospect it seems highly appropriate, nor can it ever be forgotten. There must be individual preferences in titles as in stories. Each one of us recalls this one or that—The Scarlet Letter, The Lady or the Tiger, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, They, The Gold Bug—which has for some reason impressed him as appropriate and effective. Yet any selected will, I think, possess one or more of the desirable qualifies of which we have spoken. And all, without exception, will be short. The day of the long and double title is past. Seldom more than five words are permissible, and four or three are yet better. Many notable titles are of but one or two. The practice permits, seemingly, of few or no exceptions. It may be well before we leave the subject to note the titles of some of the fairy tales which have persisted for generations. The fairy story, we observed at the outset of our study, was worthy of careful examination, for a story which survives generations of oral tradition is pretty sure to be effective and polished narrative. The titles, too, must have been worn smooth of all superfluities. They have, perhaps, even changed and but the best survived. There are such as Cinderella or the Crystal Slipper—sometimes eithersingly, Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow-White, Blue-Beard, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, The Babes in the Wood—all are memorable and arresting; all are short. NAMES o CHARACTERS In the novels and plays of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and even later, it was customary to designate the dominant attribute of the story's characters by means of the name chosen. There are such as Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Allworthy, Squire Western, Mrs Milkmsait, and Snake. These are too obvious for our modern taste, and the custom has pretty well dropped in literature. Yet Dickens, Meredith, and Hardy at times employ modifications of the device, and Dickens often closely approaches his predecessors of the early days of the novel. The Cheeryble brothers suggest only too openly gentlemen of a cheery disposition. Meredith, too, inThe Egoist, sees fit to call his hero Sir Willoughby Patterne, a name clearly indicative of character. Hardy selects for one of his rustics such a name as Gabriel Oake. Names may undoubtedly be made highly indicative of character without too openly defining it. Dickens, who is at times too obvious, is also often inimitably successful. Mr. Micawber is an ideal name for an erratic and humorous character. Nicholas Nickleby seems in keeping with the energetic and care-free nature of that young man; and Silas Wegg, Uriah Heep, Mr. Pecksniff, Sairey Gamp, Samuel Weller, and Mr. Pickwick, though uneven in quality, are all excellent. Why is it that a name seems appropriate? Do the qualities of character as revealed in the story so color it that for this reason alone it seems significant? Or is there a subtler reason? As an extreme instance of an artfully contrived name, let us examine Poe's Ligeia. The sound of it is suggestive of grief and sadness. This is due to the associations which cluster about the sounds of which it is composed, for Ligeia is but a rearrangement of the letters which compose "elegy. " The associations of this word unconsciously surround the name Ligeia and give it color. Certain sounds, singly or in combination, are humorous in their connotation. Thus " q, " perhaps because of its association with "queer, " suggests something odd. A few of my readers may recall a once-noted book entitled Queechy. It is a beautifully absurd name, suggestive of wet weather and goloshes. But though the heroine, Queechy, was much given to tears, the author did not, I fancy, intend the suggestion. The associations of sounds and their power of suggestion usually elude exact analysis. Certain combinations of letters are absurd, others dignified, and yet others poetic. A sensitiveear de tects the suggestion, even though it cannot define it. The careful author, alive to this fact, seeks names which harmonize with his characters; the less obvious the harmony, the better, if the effect be gained. Dickens possessed an ear usually trustworthy and sought the desired name until he found it. Aside from the less definable, suggestive power of sounds, are associations less difficult to grasp. I once read a story of which the heroine was named Miss Dill, unhappily suggestive of pickles. A tragic or grave tone would be difficult to maintain were the hero named Juggins or Tootle. These, appropriate to farce-comedy, are, because of their associations, for some reason absurd. Names subtly appropriate to character may. indeed, not be demanded of every story, though never amiss; but the author should seek to render them at least innocuous, and in so far as possible devoid of incongruous associations. That names in sound and suggestion should harmonize with the characters and the story theme is, however, but the half of the obligation. Names are much more than individual appellations; they are indicative of race and class. Schmidt, Ryan, and Sobieski, Warren, Lee, and Alden are names of racial and sectional import. Silas Lapham is appropriate to a Yankee of long descent, and either close to the soil or but a sin gle remove from it. Clara Middleton and Elizabeth Bennett are names appropriate to middleclass heroines. Lovelace suggests the cavalier, and is suited either to a villain or a hero. Maggie Tulliver is a name applicable to a rustic maiden of the lower middle class. Given names, as well as surnames, are rich in suggestive qualities by reason of characters in real life and in fiction with which these names are associated. Dorcas and Priscilla suggest modest maidens of Puritan origin. Mary is a name denoting virtue and honesty, as, too, is John. Claude and Percival suggest to me erratic and unreliable characters. Muriel, Gwendolyn, and Gladys are appropriate to fashionable maidens of the British aristocracy. Oliver, Henry, Susan, and Ruth are names which I associate with solid characters, devoid of affectation. It is certain that names are colored for each of us by our individual associations, and it is likewise true that we know many a man and woman inappropriately named. Parents are unreliable in these matters, and too often afflict commonplace offspring with fanciful names. Nevertheless, there is some common basis of consent as to the significance of many names, and this the writer should take into account as he labels his characters. Perhaps it is fear of the danger which waits upon unusual names that leads many present-day writers to employ them sparingly. Neutral names take on the characteristics with which the writer endows his creations and are, therefore, safe. Kipling and others not infrequently endow the heroes of romantic stories with prosaic names, achieving thereby an effect of greater credibility and realism. When Thomas Smith, meets romantic experiences we are inclined to believe them true. Note that in Without Benefit of Clergy the hero is named, prosaically, John Holden. The girl, however, is named Ameera, which, whatever its Oriental significance, to Western ears suggests love. We cannot, therefore, lay down any hard-andfast principles in this matter of nomenclature. It will suffice to, point out that names convey dim suggestions of character, and arouse congruous or incongruous associations by reason of the sounds of which they are composed. Given names, too, are enriched by associations, these varying with the individual experience. The careful writer bears these points in mind as he seeks names appropriate to his creations, seeking at least to avoid the incongruous. Category:Titles Category:Names